Time for the ‘ better angels of our nature’

I was pleased that Sunday’s paper included Colin McEnroe’s conciliatory column (“Throw some love at Conn. Republicans”) but disappointed it chose to run Susan Campbell’s vindictive commentary (“A Trump voter? Don’t expect me to forget”).

Colin is right. Susan is wrong. It is time, as General MacArthur once said, to be “proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.”

It is time to be generous with those with whom we disagree.

It is not time to be mean-spirited but to have, as Lincoln once said in a time of differences far sharper than those which divide us now, “… a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people.”

He asked, “Is there any better, or equal hope, in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side… that truth, and that justice, will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people.”

And in what is arguably the greatest appeal for civil harmony ever put forth, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861), ends:

“We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It is time for us all — whether our candidate won or lost — to rise above rancor and, loving our country, treat one another again with courtesy and respect, finding within us what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

Ken Brooks Danbury